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Tuesday, May 1, 2007

Crunch Style

The smell of the sea is in the air in my house; not because it's Spring and the winds are blowing West from Long Island Sound, but because in the course of clearing out my basement, one obstacle to overcome was the removal of the failed water softener.

Flashback: about 18 months ago, a circuit breaker blew in my basement. This line fed, among other things, a forced-drain pump for the basement toilet and shower, and the water softener. (You can find a more complete account of this event in Lame History here.) So - the water softener sat down there like Lot's Wife in a plastic tube. Full up with salt, totally immobile. Even with four men, we couldn't get it up the stairs. So, Karl cut it apart with his sawsall, and all the salt got dumped into a waiting bin. Now, the hacked-apart softener sits in the driveway awaiting removal, and the salt-bin fills the house with the aroma of cured ham.

There's also a refrigerator from the early 70's down there, that predates all the construction around it. It, too, proved too much for us to handle, so I'll need to get a cutting torch for that.

Uch. This entry is boring even me. Apologies. I really don't want this blog to devolve into a remix of "Terrors of Pleasure: The House." In fact, I'm pretty much keeping this thing going as a way to disengage my mind from all of the mundane stuff that keeps me occupied the rest of my waking (and, sadly, sleeping) hours. I'll cut it short and spare you the rest. I will do a photo document of all this, and at the end we'll have ourselves a nice web slideshow of the fall and rise of 49 Cedar Street.

In the interim, this salt tang in the air is making me long for a trip to Point Judith. Maybe some fish & chips. That'd be nice...